At long last, Behemoth! Console players got him last August, but as of December 21, we PC Monster Hunters finally get the opportunity to have a go at the iconic Final Fantasy monster. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this.

I got even more excited about it after the Monster Hunter crossover event in Final Fantasy XIV, where you get to fight Rathalos. Sadly, this was because the FF XIV event felt very lackluster to me. It might have helped if I’d jumped on it as soon as it dropped, also back in August, but by the time I got to it, not many players wanted to do the fight, which is unfortunate for many reasons.

One, in FF XIV, it’s an eight player fight (as opposed to up to four players in a round of Monster Hunter), so filling up a party to go take Rathalos down can be difficult at this point, as there’s always plenty of new content in FF XIV and the novelty of fighting Rathalos has worn off.

Two, getting all the goodies (minions, cosmetic armor, orchestrion rolls– playable in-game music– furnishing items, and most importantly, the Rathalos mount) takes a lot of Rathalos scales. You get two per victory fighting the regular version (people are much more likely to queue for this in my experience; I can never get enough players to do the extreme version of the fight). You need fifty scales just for the mount, and while admittedly that’s the most expensive thing, that’s a lot of work! I love grinding, but I haven’t gotten it done in FF XIV for Rathalos. That’s too much, even for me.

On the bright side, getting the loot for Behemoth is much easier . . . well, that’s not strictly true. It is potentially less time consuming. Beating him just once gets you an adorable Behemoth costume for your Poogie, the Dragon Soul kinsect for Insect Glaive users (which looks pretty awesome in action, actually), titles and poses for your Guild Card, and the Final Fantasy Dragoon Jump emote.

Also, one victory probably gets you enough parts to build the Gold Chocobo Rod weapon and Moogle Alpha armor for your Palico. And I have to tell you, if you’re a Final Fantasy fan, this is amazing. Your Palico flies when he’s in this armor, just like a Moogle, and he even makes the Moogle noise! Fantastic. ❤

If you want the Gae Bolg Insect Glaive and the Drachen armor set, that will take multiple victories. I doubt you’ll have to be successful anywhere near the twenty-five times you’d have to be to get the Rathalos mount in FF XIV (doing the normal fight) to make everything.

However.

The game still likes to randomly drop people out of multiplayer quests. I have scoured forums and gotten my software engineer husband to help me. We’ve done everything we can with router settings and so on to try and fix the problem.

It still happens. I ran five multiplayer quests today to test it, one Teostra/Lunastra quest and four attempts at Behemoth. In the first quest, someone dropped at about the seven minute mark. In the second quest, it happened at three minutes. During the third quest no one dropped, and we almost won (darn it, we were so close). During the fourth quest, we lost someone at about seven minutes again, and finally, on attempt number five, we lost someone at the ten minute mark. I noted in all drop cases the afflicted players froze or ran in place before disconnecting, implying it was a true drop and not an intentional quit.

Believe it or not, this is better than usual. Often, it drops two people out of the quest, or kicks you into your own session alone.

Now, as you may remember from my Arch-tempered Vaal-Hazak article, I finally got frustrated enough with all these player drops that I decided to go it alone, even though that is not how I like to play this game. I was successful. I managed to beat him enough times during the event that I got everything I wanted.

That’s not going to work this time, because the Behemoth fight is structured to be a multiplayer fight. The tooltips in the loading screen warn you that you should not be attempting this fight solo. Thank goodness Behemoth is not an event; he has been permanently added to the game, much the way Deviljho was with a Special Assignment quest, so I don’t have to pull my hair out attempting to grind this one out quickly.

The Monster Hunter: World Wiki has some great tips, and NCH Productions’ Behemoth Do’s and Don’ts video is hilarious and informative, so as usual, I’m going to give tips that aren’t really mentioned much elsewhere. The game dropping players out of sessions I can’t help with, and I honestly have no idea how to deal with it. Be patient and get ready to be frustrated if you decide to fight Behemoth? I will appeal to the RNG spirits to send you better luck with that than I’ve had.

The Behemoth fight is actually really awesome. It reminds you of a Final Fantasy and/or MMO fight without completely changing the way Monster Hunter is played; it still feels like a Monster Hunter-style fight, it just has some novel elements. Again, I’ll leave the bulk of the strategy explanation to others, but I will say that the most important things to do are A) make sure you do not let Behemoth break the Comets he drops, and B) make sure a fallen Comet is between you and the Meteor impact zone when Behemoth casts Ecliptic Meteor.

This can be a lot harder than it sounds, but I think it’s a fun mechanic. Also, Guard Up will not save you from Ecliptic Meteor. I’ve tried. Apparently that Jump emote can also save you. Good luck with that, apparently it requires crackerjack timing. Behemoth will cast Ecliptic Meteor every time he changes zones, except the first time.

Most strategies will encourage you to have a dedicated healer and tank. Having a good tank is super amazing. As far as healing, more overlap = better plan. Everybody should consider bringing Wide-Range to this fight to share heals if they can. If you can’t, you should really bring Lifepowders. If you have a good tank, he’s going to need you to help keep him healthy.

I’m on the fence about Flash Bombs. They’re useful for interrupting a cast of Charybdis, which targets a player with a tornado of wind. If this happens to you, book it for the side of the arena to drop the tornado out of everyone’s way. There are two problems with relying on Flash Bombs to interrupt it.

One, if you do have a good tank and he’s working on getting enmity, a Flash Bomb resets aggro. So your awesome tank will get annoyed quickly. Two, I imagine PC players will eventually get access to the Extreme Behemoth fight . . . and I’ve read that Flash Bombs stop working on Extreme Behemoth after a while. Better to learn to either drop the tornados in convenient places or, better yet, have a tank that’s good at gaining and keeping enmity, because Behemoth doesn’t cast Charybdis if he’s aggroed on someone. Save those Flash Bombs for when someone who isn’t the tank accidentally gains enmity.

I’m also on the fence about prolonging a mount on Behemoth. If you change positions on time and don’t attack while you’re up there, you can stay mounted for a long time– especially if someone has Wide-Range and is eating Rations or Steak to replenish your Stamina– and while Behemoth is mounted, he doesn’t cast any of his hugely damaging spells. While this sounds awesome, if someone is mounted on him long enough, he starts thrashing around a lot and rolling around to try to get them off, and it makes it really hard for melee players to do any damage.

As far as breaking parts on Behemoth goes, it’s pretty obvious when his horns are broken and his tail’s chopped off, but his forelegs are breakable too. There’s a long spike that protrudes out from the back of his elbow, you’ll know when you’ve broken a foreleg when that spike is gone.

The Behemoth Do’s and Don’ts video mentions this but it is otherwise rarely mentioned and very important: bring Astera Jerky (or Sushifish Scales, if you fish), because Odogaron is officially no longer the only monster in the game that can inflict the Bleeding status on you; Behemoth would be happy to. If you have Wide-Range, eating Astera Jerky removes bleeds on other people too. Behemoth hits like Thor’s Hammer, so no one has the luxury of bleeding away precious health.

I really enjoy this fight. My only real gripe with the mechanics is that I wish Ecliptic Meteor didn’t have such a short cast time. But then again, if people (including me) were better at placing Comets, maybe the mad dash for safety wouldn’t be so frantic.

It’s a fun fight that requires careful placement and management of obstacles, assets, and the monster on the battlefield. Those Charybdis tornadoes need to be placed out of the way. The Comets need to be accessible, but you can’t fight Behemoth near them or else he might break them, ensuring your team gets one-shotted if Ecliptic Meteor is cast and there are no Comets to hide behind. The Behemoth fight is innovative, different from the other fights in Monster Hunter: World, while not compromising any of the things that make the game awesome.

And it is completely hamstringed by this multiplayer issue. It is so frustrating to be in an awesome, interesting fight with other players, a fight that requires other players, only to lose some or all of your team just when you’re getting warmed to your work. If this problem was annoying before in the Arch-tempered fights– which you could do solo if you really wanted to– it is unbearable in the team-oriented Behemoth fight.

Note: Before this article published, I tried the Behemoth fight with the other members of The Cartographers Guild. I lost count of how many times we played it . . . at least five, maybe ten? No one ever dropped. The other Guildies all live in the same house about forty minutes to an hour away from me. Somehow this is extremely relevant because again, zero drops.

Capcom, I love this game. I’ve waited a very long time for it. I have bought consoles in the past specifically and only to play Monster Hunter games, as I discussed in my TroubleGMR’s Favorite Video Games: the Monster Hunter Series article. This dropping players from multiplayer sessions thing is egregious, especially in a fight that is not designed to be fought solo. Multiplayer is a huge feature of your game, and it doesn’t work. This is not a minor issue. Please, please get this fixed. The Behemoth fight is truly awesome, but it’s hard enough without the technical issues.

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Published by TroubleGMR

Leah has always loved to write, so much so that when she's really in the zone, she has to be bribed away from the keyboard. She accepts all kinds of tribute, the earliest of which was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from an excited sister that was desperate to lure Leah away from the computer for a few minutes, so she wouldn't be caught in the terrible sin of reading over Leah's shoulder. Being older now, Leah is also wiser. This is demonstrated by the fact that the bribes have to be of higher quality now to have an effect. Also, that occasionally her writing is considered entertaining to people other than her sister.
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